Two local residents were detained under suspicions of being members of the administrative centre of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses in Russia, organizing teaching and meetings where reading of\u00c2\u00a0banned religious literature took place. Searches were carried out at six addresses in Polyarny. \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The town is home to a naval yard\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0several of the diesel-powered submarines and other warships of the Northern Fleet have Polyarny as homeport.<\/p>\n
The extremist law banning Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses in Russia provides for a maximum sentences of 6 to 10 years in jail.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a wave of practicing Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses are fleeing Russia. More than a thousand people are now seeking asylum in several European countries, including Finland, the newspaper\u00c2\u00a0Helsingin Sanomat<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0reported earlier this winter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00c2\u00abIt all started last summer, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when the first Witnesses sought asylum in Finland, spokesperson Veikko Leininen with the organization\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Finnish branch told the newspaper.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00abMany dozens at least are still to come,\u00c2\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n Press adviser Therese Bergwitz-Larsen with the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go into details about particular reasons for asylum seekers coming to Norway.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00abUnfortunately, we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say anything in general on the background for reasons to apply for asylum, since the number [from Russia] is so small.\u00c2\u00bb<\/p>\n Statistics from UDI show\u00c2\u00a0that 15 persons came\u00c2\u00a0from Russia\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0first three months<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0this year. In\u00c2\u00a02017<\/a>, 58 Russian asylum seekers\u00c2\u00a0came to Norway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Russia, the number of Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses are estimated to about 175,000. That be, before the organization was declared extremist. Viewed with skepticism for denying military service, voting and refusal to take blood, the members are seen as both a threat to themselves, their children and public safety.<\/p>\n Also during Soviet times, the Witnesses were persecuted.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Human Right Watch recently called on Russian authorities to drop charges against Danish citizen Dennis Christensen adherent for practicing his faith. Christensen has been in pretrial custody for 11 months in the town of Orel.\u00c2\u00a0Human Right Watch<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0argues that Russia is a member of Council of Europe and\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefor is obligated to protect the rights to freedom of religion and association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last April, a ruling by Russia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Supreme Court banned all Jehovah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Witnesses organizations throughout the country, arguing the religious group to be extremist. On Friday, Murmansk regional authorities\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 newspaper\u00c2\u00a0Murmanski Vestnik\u00c2\u00a0reports about raids made by FSB…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-news","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5729,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions\/5729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/fFpzMGv.jpg\")
\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n